Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1907 — THE CONQUEST of CANAAN [ARTICLE]

THE CONQUEST of CANAAN

By BOOTH TARKINGTON,

Author ot "Cherry," "Monsieur Beaucalre," Etc. COPYKICHT, 1009. BY HARPER O BROTHER*

BYMOPBIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Chapter I—Eugene Bantry, a CaDsan (Ind.,) yonng man, who haa been east to college, recants borne and aatound* the natives by the Rorgeousneia of his raiment. His stepbrother. Joe Loudln. is characterized by the aged male gossips who dally assemble at the National House for argument as the good for nothing associate of doubtful characters. II Eugene's appearance haa a pronounced effect upon Mamie Pike, whose father, Judge PUte, Is the wealthiest and most prominent Citizen of Canaan. Joe worships Mamie from •tar. Eugene Interferes in a snow tight between Joe and his holdenish and very poor •dri friend, Ariel Taber, who is worsted. Ariel hotly resents the Interference and slaps Eugene, who sends her home. lll—Ariel, unbecomingly attired, attends Mamie Pike s Ball. IV—Joe, concealed behind some plants «n the Pike veranda, watches hungrily for a glimpse of Minnie. Ariel is ignored by most of the guests. Ariel discovers Joe, aut shortly Afterward, learning that her uncle, Jonas Tabor, baa died suddenly, leaves. The Daily Tocsin ol the next day tells of Joe’s discovery On the Pike veranda and of bis pursuit and escape therefrom. It also refers to wounds In the head of himself and of Norbert Flitcroft, who detected him. Joe retires to the “Beach,” a low resort kept by his friend, ■lke Sheehan, who dresses his wound, VI Joe leaves Mike's place. He visits Ariel Tabor, who, by the death of her Uncle Jonas, has become rich. She wishes Joe to accompany her and her grandfather to Paris. Joe refuses and leaves Canaan to avoid arrest for the trouble at Judge Pike’s. Vll—Joe Is beard from two years later as a ticket seller lor a side show. Eugene Bantry also meets him seven years later in a low resort In New York, but wisely refrains from advertising it. Vlll—Joe returns to Canaan a full-fledged lawyer. Even hts father ignores kim, and he Is refused accommodations at the National bouse. IX—Joe Is welcomed at the “Beach;” and “Happy Fear," one of Joe’s admirers, seriously assualts Nashville Cory, a detractor. At the end of Happy’s term In prison he visits Joe, who now has a law office on the square, with a living room adjoining. Joe has a large practice, principally among the lower classes, and. Is frequently attacked by the Tocsin. Joe begins, in his lonltness, to yield to the seductions ot the bottle. Bantry’s engagment to Mamie Pike Is announced. Bantry la now associate editor of the Tocsin, owned by Judge Pike. X—Joe awakens after a "bad night” with the worda, “Remember, across the Main street bridge at noon,” ringing in bis ears. He goes there and is presently joined by the moat beautifully dressed girl he has ever seen. Xl—She turns out to be Ariel Tabor, arrived In Canaan the night before from her long sojourn in Paris. She has seen Joe as she alighted from the train and, realizing his condition, had escorted him home after exacting from him a promise to meet her the next day (Sunday) across the Main street bridge at noon. Joe learnt that Ariel is stopping at Judge Pike’s home, the judge having satire charge of her money, etc. XII— Eugene Bantry, although engaged to Mamie, Is much smitten with Ariel's charms. Judge Pike tries his usual blustering tactics with Ariel, but subsides When she tells him that she shall ask him to turn over the care of her eatate to Joe Louden. Xlll—Ariel holds a sort of Informal reception at Judge Pike'sand learns that the “tough element” is talking of running Joe for mayor. XlV—Happy Fear and Nashville Cory have more trouble. Joe corners Happy and sends Claudlne (Mrs. VWr) to meet him. XV—Ariel visits Joe’s office to put her affairs in his hands. While there Happy Fear rushes in and announces that he has killed Nashville Cory in self defense. Joe makes Happy give himself up. XVI— Mamie Pike admits to Ariel that she, too, hat begun to believe in Joe Louden. XVII— The Tocsin makes virulent attacks on Joe Louden and Happy Fear. Mike Sheehan bints that he may shortly have some inYeresttng secrets to divulge In connection with Judge Pike’s affairs.

CHAPTER XVIII. IT was a morning of the wannest week of mid-July, and Canaan lay Inert and helpless beneath a broiling sun. The few people who moved about the streets went languidly, keeping close to the wall on the •hady side; the women in thin white fabrics; the men, often coatless, carrying palm leaf fans and replacing collars with handkerchiefs. In the courthouse yard the maple leaves, gray with blown dust and grown to great breadth, drooped heavily, depressing the long| motionless branches with their weight, so low that the four or five shabby Idlers upon the benches beneath now and then flicked them sleepily with whittled sprigs. The doors and windows of the stores Stood open, displaying limp wares of trade, but few tokens of life, the clerks hanging over dim counters as far as possible from the glare In front, gosalplng fra'gmentarily, usually about the Cory murder and anon upon a subject ■uggested by the sight of an occasional pedestrian passing perspiring by with acrooged eyelids and purpling skin. From street and hot waves swam up and danced themselves Into nothing, while from the riv •r bank a half mile away came a sound hotter than even the locust’s midsummer rasp, the drone of a planing mill. Greater heat than that of these biasing days could not have kept one oi the sages from attending the conclave now, for the battle was on In Canaan, .and here upon the National House corner, under the shadow of the west, wall. It waxed even keener. Perhaps sre may And full justification for calling what was happening a battle In so far as we restrict the figure to apply to this one spot! Elsewhere In the Canaan of the Tocsin the conflict was too one aided. The Tocsin bad Indeed tiase of Happy Fear In adi convicted and condemned day grew more bitter. Nor sent vigor of Its attack wlthI i Main street seemed in the >wn was Incensed and rousnsity of feeling it had not ce the civil war, when, on : had set out to bang half a Ights of the Golden Circle.” jeen hissed on the street is since the inimical clerk ed at him. Probably demos that sort would have tad he remained In Canaan, nost a month he had been his office closed, its threshrith dost Thera were peojelieved that be had run i, this time never to return, » who held to this opinion Louden and her Slater, Joe’a Upon only one point was

everybody agreed—that twelvo men could not be found In the county who could be so far persuaded and befuddled by Louden that they would dare allow Happy Fear to escape. The women of Canaan, Incensed by the terrible circumstances of the case, as the Tocsin colored It—a man shot down In the act of begging hla enemy’s for-giveness-clamored as loudly as the men. There was only the difference that the latter vociferated for the hanging of Happy; their good ladies used the word “punishment.” And yet, while the place rang with condemnation of the little man In the jail and his attorney, there were voices here and there uplifted on the other side. People existed, It astonishingly appeared, who liked/Happy Fear. These were for the greater part obscure and even darkling in their lives, yet qnlte demonstrably human beings, able to smile, suffer, leap, run and to entertain fancies; even to have, according to their degree, a certain rudimentary sense of right and wrong, in spite of which they strongly favored the prisoner’s acquittal. Precisely on that account, It was argued, an acquittal would outrage Canaan and lay it open to-untold danger. Such people needed a lesson. The Tocsin Interviewed the town’s great ones, printing their opinions of the heinousness of the crime and the character of the defendant’s lawyer. “The Hon. P. JF Parrott, who so ably represented this county In the legislature some fourteen years ago, could scarcely restrain himself when approached by a reporter as to his sentiments anent the repulsive deed. ‘I should like to know how long Canaan Is going to put up with this sort of business,’ were his words. ‘I am a law abiding citizen, and I have served faithfully and with my full endeavor and ability to enact the laws and statutes of my state, but there Is a point In my patience, I would state, which lawbreakers and their lawyers may not safely pass. Of what use are our most solemn enactments, I may even ask of what use is the legislature Itself, chosen by the will of the people, If they are to ruthlessly be set aside by criminals and their shifty protectors? The blame should be put upon the lawyers who by tricks enable such rascals to escape the rigors of the carefully enacted laws, the fruits of the solon’s labor, more than upon the criminals themselves. In this case if there la any miscarriage of justice I will say here and how that In my opinion the people of this county will be sorely tempted, and. while I do not believe in lynch law, yet If that should be the result It Is my unalterable conviction that the vigilantes may well turn their attention to the lawyers or lawyer who brings about such miscarriage. I am sick of It’ ”

The Tocsin did not print the Interview it obtained from Louie Farbach—the same Louie Farbach who long ago had owned a beer saloon with a little room behind the bar, where a shabby boy sometimes played dominoes and seven up with loafers; not quite the Bame Louie Farbach, however, In outward circumstance, for he was now the brewer of Farbach beer and making Canaan famous. His rise had been Teutonic and sure, and he contributed one-twentieth of his income to the German Orphan asylum and oae-tenth to his party’s campaign fund. The twentieth saved the orphans from the county, while the tithe gave the county to his party. He occupied a kitchen chair, enjoying the society of some chickens In a wired Inclosure behind the new Italian villa he had erected In that part of Canaan where he would be most uncomfortable, and he looked woodenly at the rei>orter when the latter put bis questiou. 1

“Hes yon any agualntunce off Mitster Fear?” he inquired In return, with no expression decipherable either upon his Gargantuan face or in hid heavily enfolded eyes. “No, Bir,” replied the reporter, grinning. “I never ran across him.” “Dot lss a goot t'ing fer you,” said Mr... Farbach stonily. “He lss not a man poebles bedder try to run across. It iss what Gory tried. Now Gory iss dead.” The reporter, slightly puzzled, lit a cigarette. “See here, Mr. Farbach,” he urged, “I only want a word or two about this thing, and you might give me a brief expression concerning that man Louden besides, just a hint of what yon think ot bis influence here, you know, and of the kind of sharp work he practices. Something like that" “I see,” said the brewer slowly. "Happy Fear I hes knowt for a goot many years. He isa a goot frient of mine.” “What?” “Choe Louten lss a bedder one,” continued Mr. Farbach, turning again to stare at his chickens. “Git owit” “What?” “Git-owit,” repeated the other without passion, without anger, without any expression whatsoever. “Git owit.” The reporter’s prejudice against the German nation dated from that moment There were others, here and there! who were less self contained than the

brewer. A farmhand struck A fellow laborer in the harvest field for speaking ill of Joe, and the unraveling of a, strange street fight one day disclosed as its cause a like resentment on the part of a blind broommaker, engendered by a like offense. The broommaker’s companion, reading the Toosin as the two walked together, had begun the quarrel by remarking that Happy Fear ought to be hanged once for his own sake and twice more “to show up that abyater Louden.” Warm worda followed, leading to extremely material conflict, In which, In aplte of his blindness, the broommaker had so much the best/of it ’that he was re*, moved from the triumphant attitude he bad assumed toward the person of bis adversary, which was an admirable Imitation of the dismounted St. George and the dragon, and conveyed to the jail. Keenest investigation failed to reveal anything oblique In the man’s record. To the astonishment of Canaan, there was nothing against him. He was blind and moderately poor, but a respectable, hardworking artisan and a pride to the church in which he was what has been called an “active worker. 4 ’ It was discovered that his sensitiveness to his companion’s attack on Joseph, Louden arose from the fact that Joe had obtained the acquittal of an Imbecile sister of the blind man, a twothirds wltted woman who had been charged with bigamy.

The Tocsin made what it could of this, and so dexterously that the wrath of Canaan was one farther Jot increased against the shyster. Aye, the town was hot, Inside and out. Let us consider the forum. Was there ever before such a summer for the National House corner? How voices first thundered then cracked and piped, Is not to be rendered In all the tales of the fathers. One who would make vivid the great doings must indeed “dip his brush in earthquake and eclipse.” Even then he could but picture the credible and must despair of this—the Silence of Eskew Arp. Not that Eskew held his tongue, not that he was chary of speech—no! O tempora, O mores! No! But that he refused the subject In hand, that he eschewed expression upon it and resolutely drove the argument in other directions, that he achieved such superbly un-Arpllke inconsistency, and with such rich material for his sardonic humors, not at arm’s length, not even so far as his finger tips, but beneath his very palms, he rejected it This was the Impossible fact.

Eskew—there is no option bat to declare—was no longer Eskew. It is the truth. Since the morning when Ariel Tabor came down from Joe’s office, leaving her offering of white roses in that dingy, dusty, shady place, Eskew had not been himself. His comrades observed it somewhat In a physical difference, one of those alterations which may come upen men of his yehrs suddenly, like a “sea change.” His face was whiter, his walk slower, his voice filed thinner. He creaked louder when he rose or sat. Old always from his boyhood, he had in the turn of si hand become aged. But such things come and such things go. After eighty there are ups and downs. People fading away one week bloom out pleasantly the next, and resiliency is not at all a patent belonging to youth alone. The material change in Aft. Arp might have been thought little worth remarking. What caused Peter Bradbury, Squire Buckalew and the colonel to shake their heads secretly to one another and wonder if their good old friend’s mind had not “begun to go” was something very different. To come straight down to it, he not only abstained from all argument upon the “Cory murder” «n<i the case of Happy Fear, refusing to discuss either in any terms or under any circumstances, but he also declined' to speak of Ariel Tabor or of Joseph Louden or of their affairs, singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter, or in any declension- Not a word coinmittal or noncommittal. None! And his face when be was silent fell Into sorrowful and troubled lines. fTO BK CONTINUED. 1